


Please Don't Eat The Dahlias

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Category: Magids Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Housekeeping Anxiety, Original Characters Have Love Lives Too!, That Goldilocks Moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 04:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11866659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: In which Maree Mallory and Roddy Hyde meet for the very first time.  Also: good ponds make good neighbours.





	Please Don't Eat The Dahlias

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



**1\. Roddy** 


I’m the first to admit it.  My introduction to Maree Mallory did not go very well.  Mrs Candace had decided that I needed a holiday (or she did), and Nick, who is really quite selfish when no one is looking at him, hadn’t written in a long time, so when Grandfather Hyde said he had to go to Earth to visit with another Magid I asked if I could go along.

It was a bit difficult getting there.  Granddad drove us in his car through the worlds a certain way, and then he started grinding through mud and we got more and more bogged down.  He tried drying out the road, but every time he stopped to concentrate on his driving it bogged down again.  We finally struggled up to a little cluster of houses below a wood, all surrounded by patchworky fields and power lines strung from pole to pole binding up the countryside. We were out of the car and wading through mud up to our ankles when a young polished looking man with fancy glasses came hurrying out the door, shrugging into his coat.

“Maxwell!” he said, “you’re here.  Senior Magid called while you were en route – we’re both needed in Thule straight away.  This is, ah…” he hesitated and looked politely vague in my direction.

“My granddaughter Roddy.  She wanted to see the world young Nick came from.”

“Oh, of course, of course, make yourself at home then.  I’m sorry about the mess inside, my housekeeper’s been ill.  Maree will be in later, though, she’ll see you right.”

I nodded formally.  “I’ll just wait.”  I’m _good_ at being self-sufficient while grown ups do their busywork.  I wasn’t bothered at all. 

So they bustled off with a grinding of gears and a slurping of mud, and I waded into the house.  The first thing I thought is that Rupert the Magid must have just moved in.  It was _full_ of boxes, and there were pictures stacked against walls, and serious looking bags of things left on tables and computers with winding cords everywhere – what should have been a spacious living room looked smaller and pokier than the Progress buses.  (The logistics crews are _really serious_ about everything has a place, and I suppose that got to be a habit with me, too.)  But a lot of the boxes were dusty with outlines in the carpet where they’d been sitting for a while, and the pictures had hooks with faded squares in the wallpaper where they must have been before, so I shrugged and kept wandering.

In all that cluttered grubby house, the one nice part was the bathroom.  It was shiny and it smelled of lemons and there was a stack of white fluffy towels on the shelf.  Having a real bath in a real bathroom is something that always makes me feel better, so I took my time and used the bath salts and enjoyed that feeling of just having four walls around me.  The window was ajar a little and I could smell a good green damp smell, and hear the chirrup of some Earth birds, and feel the gentle pulsing of the node up the hill and the spring that it guarded.  When I got dressed again I was feeling a lot more like someone who could be polite to Nick about him not visiting, or calling, or writing, in _months_.

I was back to exploring with my wet hair neatly tied up, pulling open thick heavy tomes with diagrams of cutaway animals when I heard an all mighty bellowing, and a very messy young woman came into the kitchen brandishing a muddy mop at me.

“Oh, you must be Marie,” I said kindly.  “I’m glad you’re feeling better.  You did a very nice job on the bathroom I thought, but the tub isn’t draining properly.  I think the kitchen would be the best place to do next.”

The ragbag woman pushed her thick pebbly spectacles up her nose.  “Really?” she said.  “And were you raised in a tent?”

“Yes, of course,” I added.  “Following the King.”

“Then perhaps you could follow him directly out of my house?” There was just a little bit of an emphasis on the 'my.'

On the mantelpiece was a photograph of a beautiful toddler with Nick’s elegant eyes in a pushchair held by a podgy plump girl with sticking out hair who looked a lot like the woman in front of me.  She had short no nonsense finger nails and ratty spotty work clothes that made her look plumper than she needed to and her hair was a _mess_.  I remembered, much too late, that Nick had said his sister was called Marie.  Or Mary, something like that.  I was raised at Court and I’m used to sizing people up and apologies being seen as a weakness.  So I didn’t.  That was probably a bad idea.

**2\. Maree** 


I can say that Rupert is the love of my life (dammit, I _earned_ him the hard way), prissy gold spectacles and turtleneck sweaters and all, but he is very hard to live with.  He has that air of someone who has never cleaned a toilet in his life, and never expects to, and I should have known that he would have a housekeeper.   My proudly working class Mum has never expected that there should be a dishrag in her hand unless there was a tea towel in mine and housekeepers make me nervous.  Mrs Flint who used to ‘do’ for Jeanine always looked down her very long nose at me – I would sneak out in the middle of the night to do my washing and hang it up in my room so she’d never have to look at my holey underpants.  Mrs Belcher is a lot friendlier, but she still makes me nervous on general principles and I was not, not, NOT having her coming back from her operation to the festering pit from hell that Rupert blithely descends into when I’m staying in my little Bristol flat.  _Boys._

So I had come around to clean the day Roddy Hyde came to visit.  It was even worse than it should have been because I had some boxes of things from Bristol that I should really unpack and haven’t.  Nick had vaguely intimated that he’d Met Someone and gone all inarticulate and hormonal when I asked him about her, which meant he was pretty serious, but I didn’t really know anything except he came back from Blest really hurting inside.  I didn’t know what to make of the idea of her, and I wasn’t expecting a surprise visit _in my house_ either.

Which gets me to the towels.  I still feel weird having enough money to just buy things, even though it’s been years since I got an inheritance.  There’s a posh shop on the High Street in Bristol that I walk past every day, and I’d just aced my finals.  Those towels were my reward.  They were my sinful decadent non-socialist white fluffy marshmallowy plushpile cosy comfort blanket of “well done for finishing your vet degree.”  I have stuck my arm up enough cow’s bums to deserve a treat.  I’d cleaned up Rupert’s – _my_ … our bathroom, stacked them up nicely on a shelf and gone home to my nice clean flat before I tried to work out whatever it was that Rupert had done with the drains.

When I got back the next day, the bathroom was steaming, _my towels_ were strewn across the floor, there was talcum powder strewn everywhere and my new bottle of bath salts had been cracked open.  I was just starting to holler to Rupert to get in here and explain when a girl, very slender and cold and icy and _polite_ , walked in smelling of my soap and saying something snotty about the untidiness of the kitchen.  Things did not go well from there.

**3\. Roddy** 


Maree’s garden was a bit odd.  I had stalked outside, my nose in the air, refusing to be embarrassed and wondering if she was going to follow me.  There was a pond and some very formal garden beds and some Earth birds – quite handsome things, as large as geese are on Blest, but deep blue with very large intelligent eyes and…

“There _would_ be dahlias,” I said.

“Got to treat them right, love.”  The cheerful voice was from a young man with warm brown skin just a few shade’s darker than Nicks.  He was in gumboots and clothes as filthy as Maree’s and was brandishing his own tool – for him a large and muddy spade. 

Which brings me to the odd bit.  There was what looked like a very formal garden, all laid out with raised flower beds and an ornamental pond.  It looked like it _ought_ to be the kind of thing I’d see at the nicer houses we sometimes stayed in when we were on Progress.  You know, middle class people wanting a little touch of the King’s Grace and getting me and Grundo instead.  But the pond was overflowing just a little, with impromptu streams and lesser child ponds of sticky mud.  I knelt down and put my fingers into the soggy earth, considering.

“There’s been some problems with the drains,” the spade man said.  “I’m Sai, Shirleigh’s boyfriend,” he added.  I must have looked blank.  “Shirleigh from next door.  She and her Mum do cleaning for the posher lot of Weaver’s End, and I help with the gardening.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I said a bit stiffly.

“No worries, Maree and Rupert are good sorts.  Hold that for me, love?”  That was a canvas bag with some arcane looking tools.  I cradled it in my arms uncertainly.  In the trees behind him I could see a large grey cat prowling idly, picking up each paw and shaking the dew off it, as if continually restartled by all the water.

“ _Please_ don’t eat the dahlias,” a dour voice said behind me.  I turned to see one of the big blue Earth birds cheerfully digging up bulbs with a manic look in its eye.  At Maree’s glare it tilted its head up and gulped one down.  I watched with horrified fascination - I could see the bulge working its way down the bird’s neck, just like with snakes.  I wanted to cheer it on, because dahlias are very seriously my least favourite flower, but it made me wonder what kinds of things snakes ate on this world, too.

“Hey, Maree,” Sai said, holding his hand up to get her attention.  “I’m going to have a go at digging a drainage trench down the side of the house, see if we can divert some of this water while I work out where the blockage is coming from.”

She nodded at him, then sighed.  I could see another of the big blue birds, but this one was ducking out through a cat door with a speckled egg cradled in its beak.  It looked for all the world like a cat relocating its kittens.  “What is going on in the kitchen?”  She bustled off.

I padded after Sai, who seemed to know what he was doing. 

A few minutes later we heard a deep wailing.  “Oh, no no no no no, NO.”  Maree came bursting out of the house.  “Water is coming bubbling up through the drains.  I mean _all_ the drains.”

I could feel her pushing with her magic, rearranging the currents of water under the ground to go around her house.  Magid magic, moving the very stone under the rock.  The flower files in my head did some unravelling: _willow_ , one said, willow for dowsing.  Willow trees with their deep roots and weeping branches.  I climbed down into the pond which had turned into a waist deep stream and waded across to where an old gnarled tree was clinging on tightly to its hillock.  The big grey cat was lolling on one branch looking bored, and the blue bird had set up a nest in a forking branch on the other side and looked proud.  I talked to the tree about the old hurt lady’s memories of growth and long roots lacing into the earth and rock and holding on and sent them threading down to the foundations of the house.  Between me and Maree and the trench Sai had dug, something seemed to be working.  After half an hour or so the shaking of the ground had stopped and I climbed down from my tree.

We trudged inside.  Maree had done something I didn’t have a clue how to do – made a bubble of air to push against the water that had tried to run through the house, I had to shove against the wall of air to get into the front door.  I admired the art of it, but the carpet was still damp and smelled evil, and the papers and books had been strewn all over the place.  “I’ll help you tidy, if you like,” I said.

“Janine was very tidy,” Maree said with a gloomy sob in her voice.  I bristled.  Nick didn’t talk much about his Mum in his letters, and not at all when he came to visit me on Blest, but I’d gotten the impression she’d been bad news.  Sickly sweet like Alicia and Sybil had been, and wicked underneath.  Sometimes I’d thought he tolerated all my prickles and sharp edges because that was the complete opposite of what his mother had been liked.  Being told I resembled her made me snappish.

I grabbed an armful of books and computer leads and took them outside.  Maybe there was a garden table I could put them on.  Maree followed me out with a mug of tea.

“Nick said you were a gardener,” she proffered carefully. 

I rounded on her.  “My Grandfather Hyde is ‘a gardener,’” I snarled.  He digs in compost, and fusses with bird netting, and talks _for hours_ about when it’s best to dig up the dahlia bulbs.  I don’t do _gardens_.  Wild places I like.  Where the wind rips through you and the sky is the biggest thing you ever saw.  Power is life is everything that matters, and then I see all you people tying up runner beans and covering your good rich soil with weed matting.  All these plants and rivers and springs want to be running free, not tied up into human concerns.”

Maree just looked at me.  She didn’t push her glasses up the bridge of her nose this time.  “When I was little, I used to take Nick in his pushchair up onto the Downs.  It’s a good memory.”  She took her glasses off and carefully cleaned the mud off them.  “When I was 14, my parents and I moved to London.  I don’t know if you have it on Blest, but here it’s got all the people in the world living in each other’s laps, it feels like.  We lived in a flat, with some potted plants, and sometimes we forgot to water them and they died.  So I’m not a gardener, either.  But something is definitely going on in my backyard.”

I shrugged and went back for another load.  If I could find some lavender, I supposed, I might be able to set up a drying spell to clean up the carpet.

**4\. Maree** 


So we trudged back and forth in silence for a couple of hours, with whatever particular thing I’d said that offended Roddy hanging between us, and Sai doing more work on that trench and swearing blind that it would do wonders, he was a miracle worker when it came to water just trust him, and that grey cat that’s started turning up sneering at us from its tree.  And eventually I just started talking, about the new towels I’d gotten, and my nice cosy flat, and the jobs I’m applying for now I’ve graduated, and how much I hate unpacking so I’ve had boxes of books following me around from home to home for years.

“The thing is, Rupert and I had that moment, just after I walked back from Babylon where we were saying ‘Really?’ and brimming with life and joy and feeling like we'd known each other for ever, and then we were settling out how all the rest of our lives were going to be and who was living where and where the pond for the Quack chicks should be and it was all marvellous...

“And it's still marvellous, but also I went back to vet school and got stuck into the final year (which is as hard as learning to be a Magid, believe you me) and taking lessons with Simon, and Rupert's busy all the time and so am I, and I got used to having my own little Bristol flat where everything is exactly where I want it to be for the first time in my life.  And now all I can think about is dishes and nagging each other about dirty socks on the floor, and I'm wondering where ‘Really?’ went.

"That's all," I said, deflated.

Arianrhod was chewing her lip.  “I grew up on a bus,” she said suddenly.  “It was a nice bus, but it’s the one my parents picked out for me, to be looked after by other people.  And I could choose to go and live in Grandfather Hyde’s house, which was his, and I didn’t; and now I live in Mrs Candace’s house, which is hers; and I still don’t really have a place that’s mine to put roots down into.  So I don’t know.”  She sat down and buried her hands in the muddy grass.  “I think the strongest trees have roots that dig through _rocks_ ,” she said fiercely, bright red spots on her cheeks.  “Nick said you were the strongest person he knows.”  She looked glumly down at the ground.  “I don’t have any roots at all.”

I flopped down next to her and revelled in the feeling of being so thoroughly muddy only an hour long shower would fix it. I could remember some of the weeks I was on an Ag rotation when I’d had a bad slip down a hillside and ended up with mud in my hair an inch thick and a farmer laughing at me.  “I just feel so blocked right now, you know?  Right now is supposed to be the time when everything in my life is flowing smoothly.  Sometimes I envy you your bus tour with every morning in a different place and not having to be responsible about where I wake up in the morning.  I’m supposed to be free and I’m not.”

Next to me, Roddy had taken her shoes off.  It looked like wiggling her toes in fresh grass was one of her own favourite things to do.

“You’re not blocked,” Roddy suddenly said.  “Neither is this water and nor are your drains.”

**5\. Roddy** 


And I _knew_ what the problem was.  All that water was coming from the node just up the hill.  I could feel that source of power which had been confined and coppiced and woven into the patchwork of English fields when it really wanted to be wild and free.  And there was something else that I could feel with my hands in the ground, something tricksy.  Something near.

“Oh yeah,” Sai said, not very guiltily.  He’d put down his spade.  “My other name is Apām Napāt.”  Maree looked as blank as I felt.  Suddenly his earthly form fell away, and we were looking at the shining golden splendour of a divinity, his belling voice resounding through our bodies like a thousand voice choir.  “Also known as the Son of Waters, Creator of Mankind, and Lord.”  We quailed before him.

**6\. Maree** 


We backed away from the shining golden form of Shirleigh’s boyfriend.  We backed away on our knees.  This was bad, this was very bad, and as the Magid who was present it was _my_ job to do something about it.  I started wrapping my fingers around the lines of power I could feel trickling out from the node near Weaver’s End.  I knew _how_ to do a banishment, but Sai – Apām Napāt – would have the same access to raw power that I did so I admit I was feeling a bit dubious about it.  And… actually I quite _liked_ Sai.  He was good company out in the garden.  He was cheerful to have as a neighbour…  I knew that I would miss him if he left.

There was a violent belling laugh and Roddy and I cowered in awe.  That’s the thing about gods – even the lesser ones like Aglaia-Ualaia bring this incredible sense of manifesting in and around you.  It’s like nothing else.

Sai’s voice reverted to normal and the golden flame dimmed and contained itself in his warm brown skin.  “And also I’m in love and I want to move in with my girlfriend.  There’s no fight here, Maree, it’s just landscaping.  More people than Magids like to live near nodes, you know.”

I shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose and glared at him.  God or no, he quailed a bit himself, before he gestured up the hill.  “Come and see, Maree, come and _see._ ”

The coppice had turned into a pond.  There was water welling up around the tree roots and gentle glimmers of the sun filtering through the branches.  I could see small flamelets whisking across the surface of the water.  “Will o’ the wisps,” I said.  “I am not having will o’ the wisps hanging around my house.”

Roddy was wading ankle deep, the water leaking into her shoes and soaking up into the fabric of her jodhpurs.  “This is what it should be!” she said, her taut tight face clearing.  “The node wants to be water and fire together.”

“ _No_ ,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” Sai said.  “We’ll set up some channels around your house and down into the river.  You’ll be living on an island.  It’ll be fun! And,” he added, with the sly look of someone who has solved tricky problems this way before, “I’ll take you back to mine for a curry.  Real curry, none of this English muck.  Shirleigh’s bringing her Mum back from the hospital today, so she’s made a sponge, too.  Everything’s alright when you have tea and a good cream sponge.”

The Quacks were paddling happily.  Lord Quack belly flopped in a big shower that sprayed us all and sent the current gaggle of newly hatched chicks spinning in happy giddy circles through the will o’ the wisps.  Lady Quack climbed onto my shoes and quacked winningly.  “Traitor,” I said.  “Alright, I’ll decide after I’ve eaten.”

So we went to the house where Mrs Belcher and Shirleigh and Sai lived, and we had curry and lots of cups of very sweet tea, and Mrs Belcher showed me her operation photos – Sai and Roddy looked a bit green at this bit – and we talked about the best way to turn Weaver’s End into an island and how we were going to turn the pond into a stream that would wind its way gently to the river.  And I knew that it was going to be alright.

**7\. Roddy** 


After dinner at the Belcher’s, Maree took me back to her house and told me to put the kettle on while she made up the spare bedroom.  She came down the stairs again and presented me with a hot water bottle with a ratty knitted cover and a clean (not-white) towel, and told me to have another shower if I wanted.  I was in there a long time, not in the shower but leaving the room as nice as I’d found it, hanging up the new white towels, all that.  I suppose I’m still used to seeing the people who take care of the minutiae of my life as not really real – other people make sure that there’s food to eat, and my clothes are washed, and my sheets are clean, and I don’t really think much about it, for all that I mind seeing Little People enslaved.  Now that I come to think of it, that might have been what Mrs Candace was trying to tell me when she sent me off on my holiday.  I am a selfish person, really, but I will try to do better.

When I came down the stairs myself, Maree was on the far-speaker.  I was being quiet so I didn’t interrupt her, I _promise_ , but when I realised who she was talking to I sat down on the stairs, the hot water bottle snuggled into my tummy and listened instead.

“Nicothodes Euthandor Timosus Benigedy Koryfoides Mallory.  Get your self-interested carcass back to England.  Your girlfriend is here to see you.”  She listened for a moment.  “She was a bit of an ice maiden at first to be honest.  Lots of sharp edges.”

There was a pause, and I put my head in my knees.  _Everyone_ who’s opinion is worth caring about thinks I’m made of ice.

“I can see why you like her.”  Maree was going on.  “You know, you keep on having these conversations with me about how you’re selfish.  Over and over again.  I think maybe you should have that talk with Roddy, too.”

Because I know it.  I’m really quite selfish whether anyone’s looking at me or not.  The one part of my life where I thought I wasn’t turned out to be a lie.  When I do something that’s _nice_ for someone, I’m already questioning my motives before the other person is.  I turned away, my face flushing hot and cold and tried to edge back up the stairs without letting off a creak.

“All those things that happened in Blest, that you still don’t want me to know too much about.  Wasn’t it that all the people you knew who are nice and, you know, _polite_ let you down?  All the adults, I mean.  They didn’t believe you when you and Roddy said there was a problem, or they let themselves get kidnapped, or that aunt who ended up betraying you… Wasn’t it Romanov who is very self-centred and all you kids with your bad manners and preoccupations and selfish moments who ended up saving the day?”

She listened for a few more minutes then interrupted again.  “ _No_ , Nick.  I mean that you are what you do.  You can tell me about your selfish feelings all you like, but I’ll tell you that your friend turned up my door looking like a prissy little madam who does white glove inspections and expects other people to pick the chewing gum off her shoes – and she didn’t hesitate to wade into stinking sticky mud to help me out.  You are what you do, you know?”

I tiptoed back up the stairs and into the fresh lavender smelling sheets of the bed Maree had made up for me.  That was an opinion that I could live with.

**8\. Maree** 


On Saturday when Rupert had got home and finished blinking at his new garden streams, I made him help me rehang the pictures and nudge the furniture around, and have a joyful fun argument about whose bookshelves went where with all my novels and reference books coming to stay.  At the end of the day we were clean and showered and in bed getting comfortable with each other again, forehead to forehead, breath to breath.  Rupert always looks so _naked_ without his spectacles.  Fragile and vulnerable and delicate and I like stroking the lines just forming at the corner of his eye.

“I was wondering if you wanted to keep your little Bristol flat,” he ventured.  “A bit scared, too, I think.  Not,” he went on, assuming a bit of pomposity for me to prick, “that it hasn’t been fun adventuring into Mallory Land.  But a bit scared.”

“I thought about it,” I said truthfully.  “It would have been a bit easier for work and that.  But having you means your socks on the floor and your smelly toilet, and having me means my gloomy sobbing voice and prickly temper and books everywhere, and that’s the trade I want.”

He stroked the corner of my eye then, Dear Reader, and that’s all you’re getting.

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to be projecting a bit of housekeeping anxiety in this story. It is dedicated to:  
> 1\. My mother-in-law who disapproves of buying any but the cheapest of towels and tea towels on the grounds that she used to work in a linen factory in Manchester and could see how much of a markup went on to identical towels just by changing the packet and shipping to a posher shop.  
> 2\. Grandmother X who grew up in New Zealand where respectable women did their own housekeeping and Grandmother Y who grew up in Rhodesia where respectable women hired staff. Apparently one of the comments Y made to X about “your girl is doing a really good job” on a visit really didn’t go down well.  
> 3\. My Mum, who following abdominal surgery insisted on showing everyone she knew photos of her internal organs all covered over with spidery black stitching. Stronger minds than mine would have quailed!  
> 4\. My partner who said I should finish this off with “And suddenly they woke up and it was all a dream” because he wants me to go to bed.  
> Apām Napāt – I confess that most of what I know about Apām Napāt came from Wikipedia and related sites. I’m trying to write more Person of Colour characters, there is nothing quite so cheerfully British as Indians with a foot on either side, it felt right to have a water deity, and oh look there’s a tricksy deity of water and fire at the same time. So here we are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apam_Napat, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/apam-napat Apologies if anyone feels I have misrepresented their culture.  
> The title is inspired by the film _Please Don’t Eat The Daisies_ , which I have been quite enjoying, mostly because it’s a movie that makes me laugh. (But also there’s moving houses and relationship issues in there as well.)


End file.
